Doctoral Fellow in Research Area 1: "Competing Communities"

April–September 2025

Competing Modernisms in Post-Independent Western India: Antinomies for the Global Avant-Garde

This research project explores the dynamic postcolonial avant-garde landscape of Gujarat by focusing on the rich culture of periodicals of the 1950s to the 1970s. In doing so, the project examines the diverse literary communities operating in Gujarat that had assimilated, developed and advocated differing and contesting strands of avant-garde aesthetics in their periodicals. On the one hand, periodicals such as Kshitij (1954-1967), under the editorial leadership of the literary critic and writer Suresh Joshi, promoted aesthetic experimentation in language and content with forays into abstraction that appealed to the educated elites. On the other hand, several little magazine movements in the region championed the irreverent, contingent and antisocial spirit of the avant-garde that was dissatisfied with the seriousness to which artistic creation had been subjected in the mid-twentieth century Gujarati literary sphere and wanted to foreground the avant-garde's philosophical and aesthetic investment in the ordinary and the everyday. Interestingly, within this formation, even nationalistic and educative mainstream periodicals such as Sanskruti (1947-1984) and Kumar (1924-till date) came to foster a space for a particular set of modernist values and a dialogue on their place in a decolonising Indian society.

The project aims to understand how these communities comprising of both writers and artists presented competing aesthetic frameworks that found innovative expression in the content, visual and material composition as well as the publishing strategies of the periodicals they produced. This will involve the exploration of the productive tension between their ideals concerning the autonomy of art and the position of the artist/writer in society. Furthermore, the project seeks to probe how the peculiar alliance of the avant-garde and the national gives rise to art and literature that seeks to surpass national and cultural boundaries while remaining acutely relevant to its local contexts. In desiring this transcultural relevance, how does the formation of cosmopolitan artistic identities during this period speak to the demands of the nation-building project that aims to propose a different identity politics anchored in commitment to the fledgling region and country? Ultimately, what does that tell us about avant-garde aesthetic politics within postcolonial print cultures?

Digvijay Nikam is a PhD student and UGC Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He obtained his MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2023 and BA from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 2021. His research interests include modernist and avant-garde print cultures, everyday life studies and post-independence Indian art history.